Description
Reviews
This thoughtful and disturbing memoir poignantly illustrates how, for good or ill, the power of art can transform human understanding. - Quill & Quire
This is a work of brilliance and intimacy. Will Aitken shows us up close what happens when some of the most ingenious and learned minds working in the performance arts immerse themselves in a masterpiece of the Greek stage. The result is raw, intellectually engaging, and exhilarating. - Sarah Nooter, author of The Mortal Voice in the Tragedies of Aeschylus
Aitken champions a way of making and seeing the arts that heightens their relevance and brings Sophocles's 2,500-year-old play into readers' contemporary lives and world. - Publishers Weekly
Aitken does something remarkable in his new book: he brings together a keen critical eye and an open heart, and - in doing so - creates a unique hybrid of critical essay and memoir. - Montreal Review of Books
"For author Will Aitken, the classics are very much alive. His Antigone Undone is about what happens to us when supposedly dusty works of art don't just resonate but skewer us straight through. At first glance, this book is an examination of Antigone's lasting relevance and we do learn about the play's meaning, its fraught history but Aitken is really giving us a personal testament, not a lesson: a testament to the rough, mysterious power of art. By the end of his brief, brilliant book, Aitken himself is nearly undone and Antigone emerges as a 2,500-year-old juggernaut more mysterious and magnetic than before." 2018 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction Jury (Michael Harris, Donna Bailey Nurse, and Joel Yanofsky)
Awards
Winner of Saskatchewan Book Award for Publishing 2019.
Book Information
ISBN 9780889775213
Author Will Aitken
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint University of Regina Press
Publisher University of Regina Press
Weight(grams) 260g
Dimensions(mm) 165mm * 1mm * 107mm